The Chains People Revere

I learned in school that governments were, "...instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,..." as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. I have also been told that this obligates everyone to submit to the restrictions imposed on us by government. This is supported by the claim that we are free because we have a democratic election process under a constitutional republic. Obedience is freedom. We do this to ourselves for our own good.

This is all a smoke and mirrors. The political class does not represent any of us. There is no agent/principal relationship between the populace and officialdom. We do not have the authority to govern our neighbors, so we cannot delegate an authority we do not have to a politician by any means whatsoever. The Constitution and its Bill of Rights have utterly failed to restrain the ambitions of the political class as they violate its plain language with impunity. How are we to rein them in? By voting? That's the process that got us into this mess as the politicians make empty promises appealing to the base nature of the voting public. These promises are always broken. Nonetheless, the majority is content. Many imagine they are net beneficiaries of government's rapacious plunder. At the very least, despite political factionalism, people tend to believe the system is legitimate.

For those of us with independence remaining in our souls, this is an insult. We understand the chains of politics because we move enough to feel them weigh us down, or reach the point where they draw tight around our throats. The government is in reality a gun to our heads. The docile citizen can pretend the chains don't exist, but obliviousness does not disprove the chains. Worse still are those who blame the independent individual while cheering those who restrain him by threat and violence. These are cowards who seek vicarious counterfeit heroism by idolizing the government's enforcers wielding the guns.

Historically, we could seek new frontiers away from the State. People shook off the chains and moved away from the stifling control of settled lands, but the State followed. In many cases, these pioneers brought the state with them. In other cases, once the trail was blazed, lesser men followed with the State in tow. In any case, freedom-minded people often drifted to the frontier to homestead or to live alongside the native tribes. While I don't mean to invoke the noble savage trope, then, as now, conflict was instigated by government trespass. When the government followed, politicians lied, stole, cheated, broke treaties, and murdered innocents from the start. This made people understandably angry, but the victims were presented as a threat to civilization despite the openly uncivilized behavior of the political class. Government was sold to the public under the guise of protecting them from rebellious hillbillies and dangerous savages.

The globe has now been entirely divided up by governments. There is nowhere to escape these tyrants and their lapdogs. Cyberspace is being pioneered now, but the state also seeks to control, regulate, and monitor everything here, too. Encryption, cryptocurrency, and the free flow of information are a threat to the busybody control freaks. The docile citizen cheers the march of the State as he laps up the propaganda telling him to fear this electronic frontier. Hackers, the Dread Pirate Roberts and his Silk Road, software piracy, and all manner of other matters are used to justify new encroachment. The only solution they can comprehend is a government solution. They want to see us chained down as they are, and demand that we see these chains as a blessing. I cannot join the chorus of worshipful reverence for useless bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, abusive police, and honorless soldiers.

"...[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,..."

There is always the temptation to stage a revolution, but waging open war against the State is playing by the rules they know best, brings harm to innocents, and results in either a stronger version of the original state, or gives an opportunity to a new group to form a new political class. We need to fight the idea of political legitimacy to truly kill the political system. I am utterly confounded by self-labeled "anarchists" who want to surrender more authority to these monsters under the guise of charity or security. The idea of political legitimacy still infects our circle now just as it infected the pioneers. I don't know what we need to do specifically, and there is no guarantee of safety in seeking liberty, but we cannot abolish governmental overreach through obedience to, or participation in, the selfsame system that seeks to enslave us.

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